Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)

List of works in chronological order

· Things Fall Apart (1958)

· No Longer at Ease (1960)

· Arrow of God (1964)

· A Man of the People (1966)

· Anthills of the Savannah (1987)

He is regarded as the founding father of modern African literature. His novels are noted for the effects of western customs and values on traditional African society. While his mother tongue was Igbo, Achebe was educated in English and his literary language is standard English blended with Igbo vocabulary, proverbs, images and speech patterns. He has defended the use of in the production of African Fiction.

Achebe’s debut novel Things Fall Apart (1958) (title is taken from the poem The Second Coming), a central text of postcolonial literature, is set in the 1890s when missionaries and colonial government imposed themselves on Igbo society. His aim in writing the novel was to ‘write back’ to novels such as Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson (1939) to present an insider’s view on his country and its people which he felt had been misrepresented.

The story depicts the life of Okonkwo, the ambitious and powerful leader of an Igbo community, who relies on his physical strength and courage. He is respected by his fellow villagers. When he accidentally kills a clansman he is banished from the village for seven years. The ultimate causes of his downfall are his blindness to circumstances and influence of the missionary church. He tries to fight colonialism single-handedly. Achebe took the title from a line from the poem ‘The Second Coming’ by W.B Yeats: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’.

No Longer at Ease (1960)is set in Nigeria in the late 1950s; most of the action occurs in the capital city of Lagos. At the beginning of the novel Obi Okonkwo a member of the Igbo ethnic group,  is on trial for accepting a bribe. The focus of the novel then shifts back in time. He leaves his home in south-eastern Nigeria to follow his dream of going to school in Britain. Thereafter, he works in Nigeria’s civil service, a colonial institution, and is forced to reflect on the fraught relationship between the Western world and the many African cultures that it hassystematically subjugated. The novel details the course of events that led to Obi accepting a bribe. The work’s title is a reference to the poem “The Journey of the Magi” by British modernist writer T.S. Eliot, in which the speaker laments, “We returned to our places, these kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here.”. The novel is the second work in what is sometimes referred to as the "African trilogy," following Things Fall Apart and preceding Arrow of God.

Arrow of God (1964) shares similar settings and themes. The novel focuses on Ezeulu, who is the High Priest of Ulu, who confronts colonial powers and Christian missionaries in the 1920s. Ulu is the most important deity in the town of Umuaro, and he brought together six warring villages to create a strong community that shares core values but preserves local village traditions. Because Ezeulu is half deity and half man, he struggles to discern what is human will and what is divine will. This conflict grows more pertinent as new challenges, in the form of British authority and Christian religion, question the hierarchies and beliefs upon which the community was built. The phrase Arrow of God is drawn from an igbo proverb in which a person or sometimes an event is said to represent the will of God.

A Man of the People (1966) is a first-person account of Odili, a school teacher in a fictional country closely resembling post-colonial Nigeria. Odili receives an invitation from his former teacher, Chief Nanga, who is now the powerful but corrupt Minister of Culture. As Minister, Nanga's job is to protect the traditions of his country especially when he is known as "A Man of the People". Instead, his position is used to increase his personal wealth and power that proves particularly alluring to Odili's girlfriend. Odili takes a stand against the government, not for ideological reasons but because Nanga has seduced his girlfriend. The novel reflects Achebe’s deep personal disappointment with what Nigeria has become since independence.

In his famous essay ‘An image of Africa: racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’ is a condemnation of imperial exploitation, it also exhibits racist attitudes.

Wole Soyinka said: ‘Achebe never hesitates to lay blame for the woes of the African continent squarely where it belongs’.